CORE Roundtable [video]

Ready for a jargon-filled game design deep dive? In this recent "CORE Roundtable" hosted by LegendsOfTabletop, we go into the weeds of CORE design philosophy, Hybrid Systems, Universal Mechanics, Psychic Content, Experiential Narrativism, Fruitful Voids...

Narrative Control - Horizontal and Vertical

I've talked about the difference between Narrative and Story, and about the nature of Narrative Structures. Now I'm going to show you how I'm applying that theory in game design. From the DayTrippers GameMasters Guide: You can't know the Story until it emerges, because its whole shape depends on...

Schematic of a Classic Murder Mystery

Start by drawing a relationship map of all the characters. Give each character a letter or short abbreviation so you can also make an indexed table with rows corresponding to these characters. Give the table three blank columns. Label the columns "motive", "means" and "opportunity"....

Theory Ramble - Hybrid Games, Expectations and Plot

Different artforms have different expectations, and some of the games already residing under the ever-stretching aegis of "RPG" are so different from each other as to be effectively different artforms. (Fuckin' Yay!, I am all for ludological diversity. I just don't give a shit about the state...

Using the Story Circle for Episodic Sessions

[This is a lightly-edited reprint of a post on the DayTrippersRPG Subreddit, based on another post to the DayTrippers Patreon blog.] Those who have read the DayTrippers GameMasters Guide know that part of the GM's job in a "full-book" DayTrippers session is to control the "vertical" position of...